1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a map image display apparatus, a map image display program and a map image display method, which are suitably applied to a car navigation system and the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an apparatus for assisting comfortable driving of a vehicle, a car navigation system has been widespread. The car navigation system has a function to display a map image, and is generally configured to determine a map image to be displayed based on a command entered by a user or a current location of the vehicle, and to guide the vehicle on a desired route while displaying the determined map image including names of places, facilities and the like.
In recent years, as a car navigation system has improved in operability, a car navigation system of a voice input type, which has been configured to realize an entry of a command from a user by the voice thereof, has also been developed and put into practical use. As such a car navigation system of a voice input type, there has also been one proposed, which uses place and facility names displayed on the map image as target vocabularies for voice recognition, and has been configured to switch the map images to be displayed to a map image in the vicinity of any of the names when the name is spoken by the user.
In a car navigation system disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H7-319383 (published in 1995), target names for the voice recognition, which include those of places, facilities and the like, are displayed on a map image, and therefore, a user can grasp a name for entering a command while referring to the map image.